There are many examples where green infrastructure offers much better value for public investment than the alternative, for example natural water filtration and natural flood defence.

Alan Spedding over at RuSource had identified and summarized an important report with the less-than-exciting title "Natural England Research Report NERR033 ‘Microeconomic Evidence for the Benefits of Investment in the Environment – review’.

Natural climate control is much cheaper than the air-conditioning (or heating) it replaces. Natural air filtering is likely to be efficient compared to technical alternatives, particularly as trees provide so many other benefits. Access to greenspace and the promotion of active travel are extremely cost-effective ways to address Mental and physical ill-health.

Who would have thought that the marriage of two tiny little words - pine from the Latin 'pīnus' meaning "sap, juice" and apple from 'apple' meaning "apple" would have split the UK from the rest of the world way back when it was first recorded in...

CLEWISTON, Fla. — The call Ricke Kress and every other citrus grower in Florida dreaded came while he was driving. “It’s here” was all his grove manager needed to say to force him over to the side of the road. The disease that sours oranges and leaves them half green, already ravaging citrus crops across the world, had reached the state’s storied groves. Mr. Kress, the president of Southern Gardens Citrus, in charge of two and a half million orange trees and a factory that squeezes juice for Tropicana and Florida’s Natural, sat in silence for several long moments. “O.K.,” he said finally on that fall day in 2005, “let’s make a plan.” In the years that followed, he and the 8,000 other Florida growers who supply most of the nation’s orange juice poured everything they had into fighting the disease they call citrus greening. To slow the spread of the bacterium that causes the scourge, they chopped down hundreds of thousands of infected trees and sprayed an expanding array of pesticides on the winged insect that carries it. But the contagion could not be contained.

They scoured Central Florida’s half-million acres of emerald groves and sent search parties around the world to find a naturally immune tree that could serve as a new progenitor for a crop that has thrived in the state since its arrival, it is said, with Ponce de León. But such a tree did not exist. “In all of cultivated citrus, there is no evidence of immunity,” the plant pathologist heading a National Research Council task force on the disease said. In all of citrus, but perhaps not in all of nature. With a precipitous decline in Florida’s harvest predicted within the decade, the only chance left to save it, Mr. Kress believed, was one that his industry and others had long avoided for fear of consumer rejection. They would have to alter the orange’s DNA — with a gene from a different species.

The article well addresses a dilemma of the nowadays world: Do we dare to use the top scientific results and high-tech knowledge such as genetic engineering? How much is still ethically to interfere with basic genetic code of species? Is it right to mix genes of organisms belonging to different kingdoms? Mankind has always feared of anything that was not understood. And we are still far from understanding firstly, how related we are with plants and animals and secondly, how often we consume mixed genes/proteins with infected crops.

A global code of ethics for genetic engineering of plants would be needed, which would support the GMO technology to maintain the plant health, while limiting the use of GMOs for commercial purposes – to achieve better taste and color of the crop…

I often ponder the ethics of opposing a technology such as GMO that provides relief from the use and abuse of harmful chemicals in agriculture. If you oppose GMOs then you need to own the problem of spraying potatoes ~20 times per season etc. See http://t.co/HyW3qs7wu7

Addressing today's agricultural challenges requires a more balanced view that must be guided by evidence. But more importantly, it requires an optimistic outlook that recognizes the power of human creativity in responding to global challenges. International development expert Calestous Juma emphasized that developing countries will need agricultural technology innovations, particularly transgenic crops to feed their people. Professor Juma said that while 28 countries are now benefitting from planting such crops, not all regions of the world are reaping their full benefits.

Speaking at McGill University to receive his Honorary Degree, Professor Juma said, "As the world's food challenges increase, so must humanity enlarge its toolbox to include genetic modification and other technologies." He then cited examples of transgenic plant science innovations in Africa, where there are only four countries planting transgenic crops.

Annals of Botany: Plant Science Research's insight:

Nice quote about feeding the world in a sustainable way: "We cannot afford to be seduced by the dim light of technological stagnation"

"Water rights sharing can only mediate conflict in the short term but cannot address water scarcity. In practice, a shared understanding of watershed functions, and reconciliation of the diverse interest and expectations of multiple stakeholders at the landscape level, .

The Western Ghats region extends from North to South over a distance of 1500 km. Out of the estimated 164,280 square km, the natural landscape constitutes only 41 per cent. The area identified as ecologically sensitive is about 37 per cent i.e., about 90 % of the natural landscape. TheWorking Group has summarised their recommendation into thirty six key points. Because of unprecedented threats to natural landscape of Western Ghats region by development projects and urban growth, the Working Group has recommended a non-tolerance policy with respect to highly interventionist and environmentally damaging activities like mining or polluting industries and made specific recommendations about prohibited activities and those that require high level of scrutiny and assessment before clearance within ESA. With regard to effect of climate change a number of adaptive strategies has been recommended by HLWG such as (i) species-mix plantations, (ii) planting of hardy species that are resilient to increased temperature and drought risk, and (iii) launching of a few anticipatory plantation projects.

Annals of Botany: Plant Science Research's insight:

The Western Ghats, the mountain range along the South-West side of India, is a major biodiversity 'hotspot'. In this report, the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel notes the need for increased protection of the 'natural landscape' parts of this area.

So far, the best-known attractants in carnivorous prey traps are nectar, colour and olfactory cues. Reporting a new prey capture mechanism in some species of carnivorous plants. They found the existence of distinct blue fluorescence emissions at the 'capture spots' of Nepenthes, Sarracenia, Drosera, Pinguicula, Dionaea muscipula and Utricularia stellaris at UV 366 nm. When the capture spot was masked by coating a non-fluorescent extract, the pray capture was drastically reduced. The study has been published as a short research paper in the current issue of 'Plant Biology'

Carnivorous plants generally don't have traps that resemble flowers, presumably so they don't capture pollinators. I wonder if any insects captured here are pollinators? UV spots are part of many flowers, so do the spots on carnivorous plant parts differ from those on flowers?

Plants have evolved a plethora of secondary chemicals to protect themselves against herbivores and pathogens, some of which have been used historically for pest management. The extraction methods used by industry render many phytochemicals ineffective as insecticides despite their bioactivity in the natural context. In this review, we examine how plants use their secondary chemicals in nature and compare this with how they are used as insecticides to understand why the efficacy of botanical insecticides can be so variable. If the commercial production of botanical insecticides is to become a viable pest management option, factors such as production cost, resource availability, and extraction and formulation techniques need be considered alongside innovative application technologies to ensure consistent efficacy of botanical insecticides.

Annals of Botany: Plant Science Research's insight:

HighlightsChemical defense is not the only type of defense that plants use for protection.Botanical pesticides are not directly comparable to synthetic pesticides.Lack of standards cause significant variability in the efficacy of botanical pesticides.Destructive extraction of plant chemicals negate most of the evolutionary successful defensive traits.We examine underlying assumptions that are made when developing botanical products.We identify practical challenges and limitations that need to be addressed.

Absentee teachers, negligent doctors, high transport costs, missing fertilizers, and elite-captured industrial policy all stand in the way of poor people’s escaping poverty. While the proximate reason for these obstacles may be a lack of resources...

Annals of Botany: Plant Science Research's insight:

"The only way ... equilibria will shift is if the incentives facing politicians change. That will happen only if politicians perceive that there is a shift in public opinion, which could be reflected in future elections or protests in the street. Public opinion may shift if the public is better informed about how much they are gaining and losing from current policies. So there is a role for knowledge, but it should be knowledge to inform the public—not just the government—about the evidence, so that they can bring pressure to bear on politicians and, possibly, move to a new equilibrium.

Jorge Cham (@PHDComics) illustrates a great 2 minute summary of a PhD disseration on plant defense. Includes genetic diversity from teosinte, the wild ancestor of maize/corn. I will definitely be showing this to classes!

Jorge Cham (@PHDComics) illustrates a great 2 minute summary of a PhD disseration on plant defense. Includes genetic diversity from teosinte, the wild ancestor of maize/corn. I will definitely be showing this to classes!

TR4: will history repeat itself? - ProMusa blog" Looming large on the horizon is a new threat to African banana farmers: the tropical race 4 variant of Fusarium wilt (better known as TR4). TR4 was thrust into the limelight when it destroyed commercial Cavendish plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia in 1988. The killer fungus went viral (sorry) and spread to banana production areas in four more countries, including China. Once introduced, TR4 spreads rapidly with infected planting material, on contaminated tools, and in contaminated water and soil.

Rothamsted Research has submitted an application to Defra to extend its current GM wheat field trial to include additional autumn-sown cadenza wheat. Rothamsted scientists believe it would be advantageous to gain further data from their experiment, in wheat planted at a different time of year and under different weather conditions with different aphid populations. This will give us additional data under a more diverse range of environmental conditions...

Because the UK’s temperate climate permits wheat plant growth during the winter, Cadenza wheat can be sown in either the autumn or the spring and both sowings are harvested in August/September. As such, the extension of the experiment will further increase the relevance to UK farmers and those in other temperate climates by covering a greater range environmental variability. This weather variability has been particularly evident in the UK in the past 12 months...

The controlled experiment being conducted by scientists from Rothamsted Research combines modern genetic engineering with natural plant defences to test whether aphid-repelling wheat works in the field.

Wheat is the most important UK crop with an annual value of about £1.2 billion. Currently a large proportion of UK wheat is treated with a broad spectrum of chemical insecticides to control cereal aphids, which reduce yields by sucking sap from plants and by transmitting barley yellow dwarf virus. Unfortunately, repeated use of insecticides can kill other non-target insect species including the natural enemies of aphids, which itself could have further impacts on biodiversity.

Rothamsted Research scientists, who receive strategic funding from the UK Government... have been seeking novel ecological solutions to overcome this problem in wheat. One approach has been to use an odour, or alarm pheromone, which aphids produce to alert one another to danger. This odour, (E)-β-farnesene, is also produced by some plants as a natural defence mechanism and not only repels aphids but also attracts the natural enemies of aphids, ladybirds for example. This work has been effective in the laboratory and Rothamsted scientists have already conducted the first field trial to investigate whether the GM plants work outside in the field, as well as in the laboratory...

Professor Melanie Welham, BBSRC Director of Science, said: “We face the challenge of producing food in a sustainable way, while minimising effects on the environment. This research is exploring one approach to solving this problem. It is important to carry out these investigations as these data gathered will help to provide answers about the potential of this type of GM technology and what benefits it could offer. Importantly, the findings generated through this extension will add to the picture of how this technology compares to others and is it vital that future decisions are based on scientific evidence.”

A useful book based on an evolutionary ecology course from Jack Dekker at Iowa State University - with a strong base from Dozhansky's "nothing in biology makes sense unless seen in the light of evolution". Are weeds domesticated species?

Wetlands have often been at odds with agricultural land uses and their very existence threatened by pressure from cropland expansion or chemical runoff. However, one of the goals in taking a landscape approach is managing these conflicts within a landscape. Today’s blog post highlights ongoing research to realize synergies between agricultural land uses and wetlands.

Annals of Botany: Plant Science Research's insight:

I missed that Saturday 2 Feb was 'World Wetlands Day1 - but at least I was out and collecting Callitriche from a wetland!

Looking for some very basic resources for teaching statistics, I found this excellent article from "Significance", the magazine of the Royal Statistics Society. It's a terrific plant biology exercise for 9 year olds - which leaves are bigger, those in the sun or the shade?

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